This assertion of a local style within a universal genre may suggest the beginnings of something
comparable to what we now call nationalism—a concept that, according to some historians, can be
identified in England earlier than in other European nations. Those historians identify that emergence, it
so happens, precisely around the 1270 sand 1280 s, the period of the pes motets and rondellus-style
conductus settings so slenderly preserved in the Worcester fragments.
At this early date nationalism—or better, national consciousness—is identified with the crown, not
with ethnicity, and is associated with propaganda aimed at conscripting a national army under the king’s
command. So far it may be viewed as merely a weaker, more abstract form of the personal loyalty one
pledged to one’s lord under feudalism. Nor is it easy to distinguish nationalism from imperialism:
England’s sense of itself as a nation had a lot to do with the efforts of the Anglo-Normans to conquer and
rule their Celtic neighbors to the west and north. But an island country inevitably has a higher
consciousness of its boundaries than a continental one, and this can promote a greater sense of civic
“commonweal.” As always, though, we should think twice before calling a tendency “progressive”
simply because it “looks like us.” There are reasons, after all, why the word “insular,” denoting “island,”
tends also to connote the parochial, the provincial, and the narrow-minded. These too are often
ingredients of nationalism.
“ENGLISH DESCANT”
In any case, the composers of the “Worcester school” rang many attractive changes on their parallel-triad